What I learned in the temple yesterday

Just before I went to the temple yesterday, I had an altercation with the head moderator of LDS.net, who summarily rejected my suggestion to try to select more inclusive quotes when publishing a ‘quote of the day’. She had published a quote by Gordon B Hinckley about being active in promoting anti-gay legislation. After she rejected my suggestion, I asked to be removed from having an account on the site, and now my IP is banned — can’t even read the site. Nice.

So with that in mind, I went to the temple, and really had a wonderful experience. As I posted before, I interpret the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil as the predefined dogma that tells you what to do without proof and without questioning. In talking about this on this and other boards, most people believe that it was necessary to partake of the tree, because that is the way that Adam and Eve would receive ‘knowledge’.

But that wasn’t the plan, nor does it say that in the temple. Specifically, Adam and Eve were to learn — gain knowledge — from their own experience to distinguish good from evil. The tree was the temptation — the short-cut, that by partaking of it, Adam and Eve might be as the ‘gods’ — immediately knowing good and evil. This, to me, indicates that there are two ways to learn good and evil: the Way of Mandate and Dogma: that we accept a predefined schema of everything we need to know, or the Way of Learning through Experience: where we know by our own experience to distinguish good and evil.

When Eve asks Satan “Is there no other Way”, Satan, the liar, responds: “There is no other Way.” Then Eve partakes. I believe that Satan’s comment was a lie — there was another way, a more Excellent Way.

I wonder for a moment if we can set aside the standard teaching that Adam and Eve were meant to partake of the fruit, and liken the scripture to ourselves. We have before us Scripture and all the words of the prophets from the beginning of time to today, or as much as has been published. This is the doctrinal “Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil”. If I were to catalog all the teachings provided in the Law and Prophets (down to today), the number of rules and regulations within the tree of knowledge of good and evil we have today is astounding. In fact, many of the very ardent rules and regulations of the Law no longer apply, and all the Prophets since Joseph Smith have published things today that no longer are taught.

For many in the church, there is comfort in partaking of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. For the most part, the protection of a rigid rule system takes out the messiness that abiguity causes in life. But there is a more sinister side If, for example, I really feel uncomfortable about gay people, I can partake of the tree, finding quotes of the Prophet that support my position, and be perfectly happy in my choice. I’m perfectly justified in rejecting gay people and denying them the right, outside the church, to marry, because the Prophet said so. The same was the case for those who favored discrimination against blacks, until 1978.

But this is not the More Excellent Way. If I learn from my own experience, and if I sit down with a black man and learn from him directly what it meant to be black in those days, I learn from my own experience that discrimination is evil. If I make a personal acquaintance with a gay daughter, and realize that because she cannot have a committed relationship, she may choose suicide as a result, I realize from my own experience that denying committed gay couples the right to marry is evil.

leaving aside the sinister side of dogma, there is a more important side of learning through experience: that which we learn through experience is more strongly learned, and less likely to be upset by “truth” that is often in conflict with dogma.